Tom Neel's Blog

Taking On A Challenge

This past week I finished my book “Live An Artful Life”, which will be self-published and available later this year. I will admit it was a challenge for both Linda and me, as anyone who has written anything knows, there are words and then there’s keeping track of all of those words.

There’s an order to things, grammar, proofing, etcetera, etcetera.

I will talk more about this book in the coming weeks, but for this week, I want to address creative challenges in general. As much as we all love art and making art, many don’t like it nearly as much when it gets hard or challenging. Creating art is essentially problem-solving via a million tiny decisions mentally dealt with second by second. But sometimes that bunch of tiny decisions pipes itself up into a ball that all needs to be handled at once. You can also have times when you go into your brain trying to reference data and the data is not there. It’s a road untraveled, questions without answers, and for some, it becomes a block.

Let me share that I don’t think it’s healthy to become too robotic with creativity. I’m all for having a tried and true process of doing things, but the things you are doing shouldn't all be easy. There’s just no artistic growth in that. Challenges are not obstacles, or I should say, don’t think of them as such. Look at challenges as an educational class given within one of your art projects, there to teach you something new. Prepare yourself for a challenge by expecting it rather than being surprised by it. Next, always keep your options alive and if you are met with failure, learn from it. Fear will freeze you, failure will free you to move forward and try again. Embrace your challenge and win!